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LTE model?

S

satchmo

macrumors 603
Original poster
Aug 6, 2008
5,303
6,249
Canada
I admit most of my usage from past iPads have been at home or local coffee shop where wi-fi is readily available.
Looking to pick up the current 9.7 iPad.

Just thinking that LTE may come in handy since I may be using the iPad in a different way since it now has Pencil support. Perhaps at a park or remote locale.

I don't stream a whole lot. Perhaps a few youtube clips or news feeds but not movies.

Does a LTE model tether to an iPhone better than a wi-fi model...is that even possible?
 
satchmo said:
I admit most of my usage from past iPads have been at home or local coffee shop where wi-fi is readily available.
Looking to pick up the current 9.7 iPad.

Just thinking that LTE may come in handy since I may be using the iPad in a different way since it now has Pencil support. Perhaps at a park or remote locale.

I don't stream a whole lot. Perhaps a few youtube clips or news feeds but not movies.

Does a LTE model tether to an iPhone better than a wi-fi model...is that even possible?
Click to expand...
If you aren’t going to pay for a separate data plan for your iPad, there’s no value in getting the LTE version. As the previous poster said, if you have a data plan for the LTE iPad, there’s no reason to tether it to an iPhone.
 
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What they said. In addition, if you use a different carrier on your iPad, you can tether your phone to the iPad if your phone carrier doesn't have signal. :)
 
I use AT&T FreedomPop in my iPad. 550 MB per month. No cost. Works great for me. It’s nice to have a backup in case you need it. I don’t regret purchasing the LTE model at all. $4 a month if you want unused data to rollover.
 
The LTE iPad frees you from never worrying about looking for WiFi ever again. If you're paying extra for an LTE iPad you should get data service for it.
 
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kristalsoldier said:
If you have an LTE model, why would you need to tether? Your iPad would have its own independent connectivity.
Click to expand...

I was thinking of not purchasing a separate data plan for the LTE iPad and piggyback off my iPhone. Unless I find a share everything type data plan.

I think for me the bigger issue is how I use the iPad. As someone said, it can come in handy when WiFi is not available.
 
chrfr said:
If you aren’t going to pay for a separate data plan for your iPad, there’s no value in getting the LTE version.
Click to expand...

That's not completely true. The LTE iPad has an internal GPS chip, the wifi iPad does not. You can still use the GPS even if you don't have a data plan. Now that might not matter to you, but it is a basic difference between the two models.

I got an LTE 2018 iPad this summer and am happy with my choice, although I rarely use mobile data. I have AT&T for my phone and the options for adding the iPad are very confusing. I got conflicting answer on the cost from the AT&T website, from an online chat with AT&T and from the AT&T store at Best Buy. Started a thread on it here and it was full of conflicting opinions.

In the end, I felt all of the AT&T mobileshare plans were just too expensive for the light amount of data use that I anticipate. So I got an AT&T pre-paid plan that gives me 2gb for 90 days and have used very little of it so far. IIRC, it costs $25, so I can have data available all year for $100 if needed. T-Mobile has a low cost pre-paid plan, but I decided to stick with AT&T.
 
If you're going to just tether to your iPhone, don't waste money on the LTE model. I never deal with tethering the fact that it drains my phone's battery much faster, so I have LTE on all my mobile devices (laptop too).
 
satchmo said:
I was thinking of not purchasing a separate data plan for the LTE iPad and piggyback off my iPhone. Unless I find a share everything type data plan.

I think for me the bigger issue is how I use the iPad. As someone said, it can come in handy when WiFi is not available.
Click to expand...

I love having an LTE connection on my iPad wherever I am, including outside (in the shade) in a park! You will have to pay a monthly fee (on most carriers, if not all) to extend your phone data plan to cover the iPad. But, if your budget will accept the at most $20/month, it is well worth it. People don't mention it, but your LTE connection is likely to be more secure than a wifi shared connection. If only through obscurity, as you're not connected along with 50 other people to the same wifi spot. I have used my iphone to tether my laptop when out and about, and it works very well — but it tethering is limited by the battery life of the phone (which might be around 8-ish hours with screen off and doing nothing else on the phone). The iPad has a much longer battery life, and if the screen is at a lower lighting resolution I easily get 13+ hours on one charge. Additionally, when we had a power outage a few years ago, using my iPad as a modem for my computer, I found the iPad will function as an LTE tether for close to 24 hours on one battery charge (with screen off, using a laptop to browse). That's an 'extended-use' scenario as we don't have power outages every year! But very useful should that happen.
 
Southern Dad said:
Isn't it only $10 per month to add another device to your plan? Most plans limit tethering.
Click to expand...

It gets very confusing with AT&T, I started this thread and got a lot of conflicting answers about the cost of adding an iPad to my MobileShare plan.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/data-plans-why-is-this-so-hard.2120597/

Most likely it would have cost $20/month, plus some additional charges like "activation". $240/year is way more than I would want to pay for a device that rarely needs mobile data, so I ended up getting a pre-paid plan.
 
I've got a grandfathered T-Mobile data plan. It is the Free Data For Life plan. I get 200mb for free every month, but I can also purchase data passes when I need more data. I like this setup because some months I don't need data on my iPad.
 
MacInTO said:
I've got a grandfathered T-Mobile data plan. It is the Free Data For Life plan. I get 200mb for free every month, but I can also purchase data passes when I need more data. I like this setup because some months I don't need data on my iPad.
Click to expand...

I had that on previous iPad. On my 10.5 LTE, I use the T-Mobile 5GB/150 days/$10, a perfect fit for me.
 
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Newtons Apple said:
I would never own an iPad without LTE. During the hurricanes that visited Jacksonville we had no electricity for days and our only form of entertainment and keeping updated was via cellular on our iPad and cell phones. ATT was even nice enough to lift all usage limits.
Click to expand...

When I need data on my iPad away from WiFi it takes me just a short moment to get the hotspot connected from my iPhone. The ease of that feature for the few times I need it during the product lifetime has removed the need for LTE for me.
 
I purchased the 9.7 iPad with LTE but don't use a cellular plan hardly at all. I bought it for the GPS chip inside.
I purchased this iPad for travel and to use mapping programs like Ulmon's City Maps 2 Go because of the tracking they can do using the GPS chip. It was a life saver in Europe and especially for walking trying to find locations.
 
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DotCom2 said:
I purchased the 9.7 iPad with LTE but don't use a cellular plan hardly at all. I bought it for the GPS chip inside.
Click to expand...

I agree this is a good reason to get the LTE models. I make maps, so it was a must-have feature for me. :) https://boydsmaps.com

However a wifi iPad can use a bluetooth GPS receiver and for less than the cost difference between the wifi and LTE versions you should get far greater accuracy than the internal iPad GPS. I have a Garmin GLO and have been impressed with its accuracy, plus it also provides 10x more position updates per second than an internal GPS chip. There are a couple other good brands in the $100 price range.

Of course, that is one more device you need to carry (although they are quite small) and it only runs around 12 hours on a charge. I believe there are apps that allow you to use a smartphone (iOS or Android) like a bluetooth GPS and send position data to the iPad wirelessly too.
 
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When I bought my iPad almost 2 weeks ago I told the sales rep at t-mobile that I was going to use it as a WiFi only device. He said oh I can do that for you when I got home and looked at about there’s no phone number and no network.
 
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When I bought my iPad Air 1 back in the day, I decided to splurge and get highest capacity storage and a Verizon LTE model. I set it up with a pre-pay Verizon account, so I could just activate it whenever I wanted and turn it off when I didn’t.

I used it on LTE maybe twice. It was a nice thing to have in certain situations, but for the most part I could always just tether to my iPhone or use available WiFi. I have had two iPad Pros now, and have not gotten LTE on either one and have never regretted it. These days, I just don’t feel the need.

I AM getting an LTE Apple Watch when the new ones come out though. ;)
 
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